


My Boy

by kissthestars89



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Industrial Revolution, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst and Feels, Ghost!AU, Original Character(s), Parent Death, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 07:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12271644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissthestars89/pseuds/kissthestars89
Summary: "Ever since I could remember, I had a hard time letting go of things past due."





	My Boy

**Author's Note:**

> ...France and Canada just need more love in general.
> 
> Based on a prompt I've found. I'm super into weird shows like The Tudors and Borgia, so I had a lot of fun writing this.

Ever since I could remember, I had a hard time letting go of things past due.

I died on the Twentieth of June, Fifteen Twenty-Four in the year of our Lord, dishonourably in another man's blood. It was a bit too soon for my time in the midst of a bloody reformation of England, where the heinous ideas of literacy and free thought were only just blossoming. I lived in these fields for what seemed like ages tending to this wondrous sea of green countryside. Wherever I touched, a new flower would spring, and, whenever I wished it, a steady rain would effortlessly replenish the small creeks and streams that gave this land life. 

A young Frenchman easily woed by many a beautiful mistress, I hastily married a British vixen and had children early. I was blessed with blond twin boys with cherubic, perfectly round faces and large eyes. My youngest, Matthew (God rest his soul), fell victim to the Plague at the tender age of nine. Grief-stricken, I searched long and hard for his soul, hoping he still walked this realm so I could properly atone for any ill manners ever expressed. But my centuries-long search came up empty-handed, and with its cruel end arrived a most poisonous and sinful era of Industrialisation.

The once calm pastures sparsely covered with livestock were now stripped naked and bare; dirty and browned. My creeks dried up to accommodate large concrete buildings that cut through the grey sky that loomed ominously above. The town I grew to love now lay unrecognisable: littered with large, machines built by man that screeched, churned, and boomed loudly in a never-ending symphony of moral death and despair.

I could not bear it.

If it was not hell, then what was? I desperately tried to whisper to the land to come back to life, praying to see a small glimpse of green peak out from the dead earth. I found my frail, luminescent fingers combing the dirt in a desperate attempt to save my life's work. As I knelt there before the concrete fortress, a couple of citizens hurried in and out, their faces dirtied and hair frizzy and unkempt. Some ran right through me, a few pausing to clutch their arms in a shiver before they continued their daily grind.

Groaning, I brought my palms to my face, resting my eyes as I welcomed the darkness that temporarily shielded me. Large tears streamed down my pale cheeks as I choked out a sob. If I could only see my boys, my Matthew... if I could only tell him how much I missed him and that I was dearly sorry. What if he was damned to Hell for eternity or stuck in Purgatory somewhere far, far away like the New World? To imagine him scared and alone broke my heart as a parent and his eternal protector.

Interrupting my musings, a tingling warmth spread across my knuckles and the expanse of my dull skin. A foreign hand rested on mine reassuringly, and I turned towards the kind presence. I did not bat an eye that someone could touch me directly, let alone see me, until the figure spoke.

"Are you okay?" A soft voice stammered, progressively becoming quieter.

"Why, I-" 

It was those eyes - those same royal purples that grounded me and bound me to this physical realm.

Matthew! Breathing again - in the world of the living!

It all felt similar to dreams the living experienced. How could he see me? I was filled with an overwhelming joy to find him, my shy, little baby boy! I opened my mouth to share my joy, but the unmoving expression on my son's dirtied face was alarming.

And then it dawned on me. Matthew did not recognise me. Me... his old man!

"Have you fallen ill, sir?" He asked flatly, a frail smile spreading across his chapped lips. This new form was way more thin and famished than his previous. With a gentle swoop, Matthew wrapped his small boyish hands around my bicep in an attempt to bring me to my feet.. all with a struggle so similar to my aching heart. I played off the pain and gave my boy a rustling of his hair.

"Not quite. Just lost my footing for a quick moment. Thank you, _mon cher_."

...And with those words, I bid him farewell. A bittersweet and lonely goodbye for my dear living boy.


End file.
